


A Single Step

by romanticalgirl



Category: Bandom, Cobra Starship, Fall Out Boy
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-03
Updated: 2014-03-03
Packaged: 2018-01-14 10:53:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,468
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1263610
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/romanticalgirl/pseuds/romanticalgirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>No one knows Pete at all. Which is exactly what he wants. Maybe.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Single Step

Pete knows absolutely no one on campus, which is part of his whole plan. He knows no one. No one knows him. Even his roommate is a complete stranger, so Pete can be anyone he wants to be.

“You must be the lottery winner.”

Pete dumps his bag on the bare mattress and looks for the body that goes along with the voice. It appears in the form a guy in the bathroom doorway, toothbrush dangling from his mouth. He seems like he’s nearly twice as tall as Pete, skinny and gangly where Pete is compact and thick. “I..what? Lottery?”

“Random chance, pure luck. Lottery’s cheaper though, and your odds are usually better. But you got me, so probably not.”

“Um. I’m Pete.”

“Gabe. Don’t steal my shit and we’ll be fine.”

“You’re twice my size. Why would I steal your shit?”

“There’s more to me than my sartorial choices. I took the mattress that seemed less jizzed on. Sorry about the sloppy seconds.

Pete glances at the mattress his stuff is sitting on as Gabe goes back into the bathroom. Oh well, it’s already better than high school.

**

It’s two weeks before Pete actually sees Gabe again beyond bleary late night stumbling in or to the bathroom, or the bright shaft of light from the hallway way too early in the morning. But one Friday Pete comes home from class and Gabe is sitting on the floor, leaning back against his bed with his sock-clad feet resting on Pete’s mattress.

“Hey.”

“Wentz.” Gabe doesn’t move or open his eyes. Pete watches him for a minute then sets his backpack on his desk. Gabe neck pops loudly as he moves it from side to side. His eyes open slightly and he focuses them on Pete. “You’re home late.”

Pete shrugs and digs a Coke out of the mini-fridge. “Sorry, Mom. Didn’t know I had a curfew.”

“Bitchy bitchy.” Gabe stretches, his body coming off the floor, suspended by the two beds. “Careful or you might hurt my feelings.”

“Well, I definitely wouldn’t want to do that.” Pete opens the can and drinks half of it in short, quick swallows. He moves to his bed and sits down, deliberately displacing Gabe’s feet.

“Ouch.” Gabe drops his feet to the floor then levers himself up onto his own bed. “You know you can’t wear that, right?”

“I can actually. I have a license from The Gap and a permission slip from my mom.” 

Gabe smirks, and the corners of his lips quirk up enough that it’s almost a smile. “You can’t wear that to the party.”

“I’m not going to a party.”

“You’re right,” Gabe agrees in time with the ominous knock on their door. “The party’s coming here.”

**

Pete wakes up in the dorm common room wearing mismatched socks, a sombrero, and a muumuu. He’s actually better off than some of the people still passed out. Pete doesn’t actually know or recognize anyone, and his roommate is nowhere to be seen. Pete trudges up to their room. There’s a tie on the doorknob of the shut door and everything smells like beer.

He sits outside the door and wonders if it’s still Saturday, and if he’s going to be able to find his homework. Or the braincells to do it. The first four people through the door last night had been lugging a giant soup pot of fruit that had apparently been fermenting for years. 

The door opens eventually and at least six people leave the room. Pete grabs the tie off the knob and looks around. He’s pretty sure a nuclear attack would have left less damage. He throws the tie at Gabe’s bed, which is when he realizes Gabe’s not actually _there_.

“Son of a bitch,” Pete mutters. “I’m rooming with Satan.”

“Nah.” A stunning girl comes out of the bathroom. Pete really needs to start looking in there first. “Satan would throw better parties.” She looks Pete over, and Pete realizes she has legs up to there, and he’s still wearing a muumuu. “You must be the roommate.”

“Are you Gabe’s girlfriend?”

She starts laughing, shaking her head as she walks to the door. “You’re funny. No wonder Gabe likes you so much.”

“Gabe doesn’t even _know_ me.” Pete sighs as the door closes behind her. He shoves a pile of books, a hockey jersey, and a box of Apple Jacks off his bed and falls onto it, dropping his arm over his eyes. “Shit.”

**

The next time Pete sees Gabe is nearly a month later in the library. He’s sitting on one of the tables with his feet on the chair, waiving his hands around as he talks to a group of girls. They seem to be hanging on every word Gabe’s saying, staring up at him with hearts in their eyes.

Pete rolls his eyes and heads down the aisle, looking at the rows of books and trying to match the Dewey Decimal numbers to the ones written on his palm.

“Petrovich. I thought that was you.” Gabe walks up behind Pete and drops his arm around Pete’s shoulders. 

“Pete.”

“What?”

“Pete. My name.”

“That’s what I said, only with the additional conjured image of a bear skin coat and a furry hat.”

Pete just stares at him for a minute. “What _are_ you?”

“The great and powerful Gabanti. C’mon. I’m about to do a disappearing act. You can be my assistant.”

“I’d feel better about that if I didn’t think I’d end up sawed in half at some point.”

“Come on.” Gabe tugs him along. “Pizza. I’m buying.”

**

What Gabe neglects to mention is that the pizza place is in another city altogether. And another state. The car ride is actually the longest he’s been awake in Gabe’s presence, even though they’ve officially been roommates for four months.

Gabe talks most of the drive, spouting bullshit philosophy and then assuring Pete it’s bullshit from actual philosophers, not just something he’s pulling out of his ass. Eventually Pete just closes his eyes and listens, letting Gabe’s voice wash over him. He’s spent most of his time at college in a mild anxiety attack, but somehow just letting Gabe take control calms Pete. He’s not sure that ‘letting Gabe’ is the right phrase, but it works for now.

“So, is she your girlfriend?”

Gabe doesn’t respond right away, probably because Pete’s question has nothing to do with Emmanuel Kant. Pete opens one eye and looks over at him. Gabe’s brow is furrowed with confusion. “Who?”

“The girl with the legs up to here.” Pete gestures to the top of his head. “Absolutely gorgeous. Looks like she could kick my ass with a thought and your ass without breaking a sweat?”

“Ah. Victoria.” It’s not a question. “No. Not my girlfriend. I think just suggesting that might be something she’d consider grounds to kill you.”

“She laughed when I asked her.”

“What kind of laugh exactly?” Gabe’s eyebrow is cocked with interest. “Like a ‘you’re funny and cute, puny mortal I could crush under my stiletto’ laugh? Or the maniacal laughter of a hell beast in human form?”

“Um. She just sort of laughed, dude.”

“Huh. Must have caught her on a good day. Or maybe she’d already met her torture quota for the day.”

“Okay.” It’s easier to agree rather than ask him why she was invited to the party, even if he’s not sure what exactly he’s agreeing to. “She’s pretty.”

“She’s gorgeous.”

“But she’s not your...”

“No. Because I like my balls attached.” Gabe drives for a while “Hey, you want to meet my dad?”

Pete’s fairly sure he’s going to end up with whiplash if he hangs around Gabe for any length of time. “Is...is he at the pizza place?”

“You think because I’m an immigrant that my dad works at the pizza place?” Gabe actually sounds pissed, and Pete’s not sure where everything went wrong.

“No. Dude. No. Just you said we were going for pizza, and then brought up your dad. I thought there was a connection.” He’s not sure why he thought that since the one thing he knows for sure about Gabe is that he doesn’t believe in segues. “I’d be down with meeting your dad.”

“Cool.” Gabe pulls off the expressway and heads for an area that look like it’s where condemned buildings go to die. “Pizza first.”

**

The pizza is New York style, so it’s automatically not as good as Chicago pizza, but Pete’s man enough to admit to Gabe that it’s probably the best inferior pizza he’s ever had. Just for that Gabe makes him pay for the next pitcher of beer, even though the guy looks even more skeptical of Pete’s fake ID than he did of Gabe’s. Pete just smiles, because they’ve already burned through most of the pie and all of the beer, so he might as well just keep on serving them.

They drink their way through that one, soaking it up with the rest of the soggy, greasy pizza crusts, telling each other half-true stories about their pasts. At least Pete’s stories are half-true. He assumes Gabe’s are too, though with Gabe he’s pretty sure he can’t be sure of anything at all. The teenage workers are glaring at their watches by the time they head back to the car, and Gabe winds through badly lit streets that eventually get brighter to highlight the nicer and nicer houses.

“He might be asleep.” Gabe drops his keys when he tries to unlock the door, and Pete grabs them and hands them over. He’s closer to the ground, after all. Gabe gets the door open and ducks inside. Pete follows him in and looks around. There’s a small light burning over the stove, giving the room a distorted golden glow. “C’mon. We’ll watch Spanish TV and hang.”

“I don’t speak Spanish.”

“A,” Gabe starts and holds up one finger, “there won’t be a test and B, the dialogue’s not actually important.” He wraps his arm over Pete’s shoulder then around his neck. “C’mon, roomie. Tomorrow you’ll have the best breakfast you’ve ever had. Even Chicago style.”

“Are you fattening me up for slaughter or something?”

Gabe grabs a pan of brownies off the counter. “Dude, I’m a vegetarian.”

“Just because you won’t partake of my tender flesh doesn’t mean you’re not offering me up to Victoria as a sacrifice or something.”

Gabe shrugs and smiles, wide and absolutely not reassuring in _any_ way. “Guess you’ll just have to trust me.”

**

When Pete wakes up there are two guys staring at him from chairs across the room. One of them looks like a more stereotypically Jersey version of Gabe, and the other one looks like Gabe in thirty years and with facial hair that Pete is absolutely certain Gabe can’t actually pull off. “Um. Hi?”

“Hello.” The older one has an accent, something warm sounding. “You’re a friend of Gabriel’s.”

Pete puts his hand down to brace himself to sit up, which is when he realizes that his hand’s on Gabe’s thigh and his head’s on Gabe’s lap. He blushes and pulls his hand away, moving it to the couch cushion before levering himself into a sitting position. Gabe makes an annoyed noise, snorts, shifts a little, and starts snoring. “I’m. Uh. Yeah. Friend. College roommate.”

“I’m Diego. This is Ricky.”

“Hi. Hey. Nice to meet you. Gabe wanted me to meet you.”

“Gabe wanted a free place to sleep it off,” Ricky says quietly. Diego says something to him in Spanish, and Ricky rolls his eyes out of Diego’s sight and leaves the room.

“I apologize for Ricky. Sibling rivalry, you know?” Diego stands up. “Come into the kitchen with me. We’ll chat while I make breakfast and Gabriel gets his beauty sleep.”

Pete follows him out of the room and sits dutifully in the chair Diego pulls out for him. “Tea? Coffee? Juice?”

“Coffee would be amazing. I mean, if it’s no trouble.”

“Not at all.” Diego starts filling the pot with water, then scoops coffee into the filter. Pete chews on a snag on one of his thumbnails and watches. He sort of feels like this is a free pass to Gabe, but he doesn’t have any idea of what to ask. “What are you studying, Pete?”

“Political science. Statistics. That sort of thing.”

“You want to go into politics?” Diego looks at him, and then laughs softly. “That is a no, I take it.”

“Definitely a no.” Pete imagines he looks horrified. “I want to study trends and predict things before they happen or get too bad to deal with. I can’t do any good if I run for office.”

“And you want to? Do good?”

“Well…yeah. I mean, doesn’t everyone? I mean, shouldn’t everyone?”

“Yes, I think they should.” Diego turns the coffee pot on and then goes to the refrigerator, digging things out of the shelves. There looks like way too many ingredients on the counter when he’s done, but Pete isn’t going to say anything. “Can you shred cheese?”

“What? Oh, yeah. Sure.”

“It’s not real cheese. Gabriel is in his vegan stage again. He makes my life much more difficult at the grocery store.” Diego hands Pete a cheese grater and a plate, as well as some sort of cheese-like substance that has a strong odor and feels weird. “Not that I mind. Considering the other things I know he indulges in, I can’t complain about a semi-healthy lifestyle.”

Pete knows he’s staring, but he doesn’t get Diego or his relationship with Gabe at all. Pete’s parents don’t joke around with him. Or about him. Or like him, he’s pretty sure. Diego seems to actually like Gabe, his voice laced with affection when he talks about him. He ducks his head when Diego catches him looking and smiles at him, turning his attention to the cheese-stuff in his hand and rubbing it against the grater.

“What do you do, Mr. Saporta?”

“I’m a doctor.”

“Oh. Oh, shit. Shoot. I mean. Sorry. Doctor Saporta.”

Diego laughs. “No need to stand on formality. Call me Diego.”

“No. I don’t think I can do that, sir.” Diego looks at him and raises an eyebrow, and all Pete can see is Gabe. “I mean, doctor. That’s something you work hard for. I wouldn’t want to be disrespectful.”

“Ah, but I told you to call me Diego. If you don’t do that, you’re not respecting my wishes, no?”

Pete’s brow furrows. “I…guess?”

“Then Diego it is.” Diego pours them each a cup of coffee and sets one down in front of Pete before sitting across from him. “Gabe has talked a lot about you.”

“He has? I mean...I barely see him. And we hardly know each other.”

“He is impressed with you. Knows you are smart and clever, which is not the same thing. He says you’re funny.”

“I’m not funny. Or any of those other things. I’m just...well, what you see. Short, ridiculous, and I have big teeth.”

Diego tilts his head, studying Pete carefully. “No. I think Gabriel’s assessment of you is far more accurate. Except the teeth part.”

Pete giggles at that then curses when he grates his knuckle instead of the cheese. Diego takes his hand immediately and leads him to the sink, carefully washing the blood off and then patting his hand dry with a towel. Pete watches him work quickly and efficiently, making Pete hold the towel around his hand while Diego goes to get a band-aid.

He comes back and places it expertly, which is a stupid thing to be impressed by, but Pete always either puts them on too tight or they end up not covering the thing they’re supposed to. “I didn’t get any blood on the cheese.”

“Even if you did, it could only make it taste better.”

This time Pete actually laughs. Diego sips his coffee and then gets up, grabbing a carton of egg-like stuff from the fridge and whipping it up in a bowl with some soy milk. Pete finishes with the cheese and watches him. “Can I do anything else?”

“Depends. Do you like peppers?”

“Yeah.”

“There are some in the bottom drawer. You could dice them up so long as you promise to finish with all your fingers intact.”

“I’ll do my best.” He gets the peppers and uses the knife and cutting board Diego gives him. “What did Gabe tell you about me?”

“That you study hard, that you play soccer, that you sleep in on Thursday mornings because you don’t have class.”

“Wait. Wait. How does he even know that stuff? I _never_ see him.”

“I work in mysterious ways.” Gabe stumbles into the kitchen, sniffs in the coffee pot and then digs in one of the cabinets for a packet of tea. He opens it up and it reeks. Pete coughs into his bicep. “Are you interrogating my papi?”

“I’m...helping with breakfast?” Pete’s so confused. He has no idea what’s gone on in his life since he ran into Gabe at the library. “That stuff really stinks.”

“It’s herbal. Good for the body.”

“It smells like it crawled out of the sewer.” Pete’s nose wrinkles. “Seriously. It’s gross, dude.”

“He’s right, Gabriel.” Diego nods sadly. “It is absolutely vile.”

“You guys have no sense of cleansing the body, of being pure and whole.” He dunks the tea in a cup of coffee and lets it steep. Pete blinks rapidly. His roommate is obviously insane. “About your inner self.”

“I know very much about the inner self, and I would not be surprised if that killed you.” Diego takes the diced peppers from Pete and scrapes them into a pan of sizzling butter. Or butter substitute, Pete assumes.

“I don’t mean your physical inner self.” Gabe’s voice has a petulant tone that makes Pete think they’ve had this argument before. “Spiritual. Holistic.”

“Smelly.” Pete clamps his hand over his mouth, trying to take the word back. Diego laughs, badly disguising it as a cough. Gabe makes a face at Pete that’s half-amusing and half-threatening. Pete smiles as wide as he can, trying his best to look innocent and slightly stupid.

“I have to live with this dude, papi.”

“Your life is very hard, mijo. Set the table.”

**

They hang around for a couple hours after breakfast. Pete volunteers to wash the dishes and pretends he doesn’t see Diego’s eyebrows raise up to his hairline. He concentrates so he doesn’t drop anything and smiles when Gabe takes a dish away from him and starts to dry. “You’re making me look bad in front of my dad.”

“I’m being polite!”

“I know. It makes me look bad.” He keeps drying, stacking the dishes in careful piles before putting them all away. Pete wipes his wet hands on his jeans. They’re a day old and probably are starting to smell as bad as Gabe’s tea. “What’d you do to your hand?”

Pete glances down at the band-aid. “Oh. Scraped it on the grater. Your dad fixed me up.”

“Wounded in the safety of my home. Terrible.” 

Pete raises an eyebrow as he looks at Gabe. “What’s your major anyway? Drama?”

“Philosophy.”

“You’re kidding.”

“No. Why?”

“You’re just...nothing.” Pete shakes his head. “Are we going back to school? Eventually? Or have you actually kidnapped me?”

“I think it would just be napping you, since you’re not a kid-” 

Pete interrupts him. “I don’t think that’s what it means.”

“And it would depend. Are you worth money?”

“Uh, no?” Pete makes a face. “And even if I were, there’d have to be someone willing to actually pay it out.”

“What about your parents?”

“I’m at college halfway across the country. On purpose. There’s nobody missing me, dude.”

Gabe tilts his head curiously. “On purpose for you? Or for them?”

Pete just shrugs. “It’s mutual.”

“Huh.” Gabe shakes his head. “I can’t even imagine that. But that makes this like fate.”

“Makes what like fate?”

“Us being roommates. Because my dad wanted like 85 kids. So he’ll adopt you. Figuratively. He’s not going to support you being a lazy bum.”

“Because he’s already busy supporting you?”

Gabe’s grin is huge and Pete thinks it could easily be predatory if Gabe wanted. “See? You’re smart. That’s like 50% being a Saporta.”

“And the other 50%? Is that being an ass?”

Gabe laughs loudly. “Dud. You fit right in. And you have a great ass.”

Pete takes a step back and instinctively crosses his arms over his chest. “I really need to get back to school. I have a lot of homework.”

“Sure.” Gabe frowns at the sudden shift in mood, his eyes on Pete. “Yeah. Let’s just say goodbye to my dad.”

Pete nods stiffly. “Yeah. Of course. He’s been great.” Pete’s impulse is to run, but he doesn’t know where he is or where he’d run to. Gabe’s his roommate, so he’s not completely avoidable unless Pete wants to deal with housing, and there’s no way he can – or will – go home.

They say goodbye to Diego and get in Gabe’s car. They’re silent for the first 20 minutes, and then Gabe huffs out a breath. “So, are you a homophobe?”

“What?” Pete’s voice cracks. He clears his throat and tries again. “What?”

“You went all weird back there. We were giving each other shit and then you just...freaked.”

“And that means I’m homophobic?” Pete can feel his face turning red. “Fuck you. Don’t call me shit like that?”

“Then what the fuck is your deal?”

“Nothing.” 

Gabe snorts. “Bullshit.” 

After that Gabe doesn’t say anything else, and Pete doesn’t know what else there is to say. The silence stretches out again, and Pete huddles against the door. He wants a shower and solitude. He wants away from Gabe’s heavy suspicion and disapproval.

“I’m gay.” Pete says it softly, almost to himself. Gabe doesn’t reply, and his only reaction is his hands flexing and then tightening around the steering wheel. “So I’m not homophobic. By definition.”

“So why the reaction?” Gabe’s voice has lost it’s accusatory tone. 

“Because usually people kick my ass. I don’t really know you, so for all I know, you suspected and now you’re trying to get me to admit something so you can...and now I have admitted it, so...” He shuts up and crosses his arms over his chest again.

“I’m the one who complimented your ass, remember?”

“I’m the one who had to have four stitches in his forehead when some guy supposedly asked me out.” Pete shrugs, not relaxing. “Besides, people like you don’t...”

“People like me?” Gabe’s eyebrow shoots up. “What kind of people is that? Jews? Uruguayans? Immigrants?”

“Beautiful people.”

“What?” Gabe’s eyes dart toward Pete. 

“Nothing. Just nothing.” Pete shakes his head and does his best to avoid Gabe’s gaze. “Watch where we’re going.”

Gabe turns his eyes back to the road. “Okay, so first of all, what? Don’t be ridiculous. The last thing I am is beautiful. Secondly-”

Pete cuts him off again. “Why is it secondly instead of second of all?”

“What?” Gabe shakes his head and turns to frown at Pete. “I’m _lecturing_ you. Don’t interrupt. It’s rude.”

“You aren’t actually my mother.”

“I should hope not, because I’m trying to fucking hit on you.”

“You’re not gay,” Pete snaps.

“And how do you know that?”

“Because you’re all...you. And there are girls in our dorm room all the time.”

“Well, I have friends. And you’re right. I’m not gay. I’m bisexual. Which means I _like_ guys.”

Pete frowns out at the road ahead of them. “So you’re hitting on me? For real?”

Gabe inhales deeply and blows out slowly. “I don’t joke about hitting on people. I also don’t joke about asses. Unless people are being asses, in which case I mock them mercilessly.”

“I do have a nice ass.”

Gabe laughs and keeps his eyes on the road. When he finishes, he’s still smiling and Pete can’t help but smile too. “You do. It’s an amazing ass. I’d tap it.”

“I’m not easy.”

“I know. You avoid me like the plague.”

Pete smacks the back of his hand against Gabe’s arm. “I do not! I have _classes_.”

Gabe shrugs and Pete could get addicted to the curve of his mouth. “Same thing.”

“You’re the one who’s never in the room.”

“Well it’d be awkward for me to jerk off thinking about you while you’re there. I mean, unless you want to watch. Otherwise it’s non-consensual, and that’s fucked up, man.”

“But jerking off thinking about me when I’m not there is okay?”

Gabe tilts his head and cuts a quick glance at Pete. “You don’t think about me when you jerk off?”

He can feel the blush creeping up his neck and making his ears burn. “We’re not talking about me.”

“Actually we _are_ talking about you. It is, in fact, our current main topic of conversation.” He hits the signal and pulls into a gas station. He turns off the car in front of a pump and undoes his seat belt and turns to look at Pete. “How do you feel? About me hitting on you?”

“Is this just about sex?”

“It’s about sex. But not just that. All that shit my dad said I say about you is true. I watch you. I know your friends.”

“That sounds like stalking.”

Gabe blows out a breath and rakes a hand through his hair, making parts of it stick up. “Is that a ‘no, Gabe, don’t hit on me because you creep me out’? I mean, as amusing as it is, given what we’re talking about, can you give me a straight answer?”

Pete fights his smile. “No. You’re not creeping me out.”

“So hitting on you is okay?”

“I think I could get used to it. Yeah.” He undoes his seat belt and leans forward, kissing Gabe lightly, softly. He pulls back, eyes wide. Gabe’s eyes are closed and they open slowly, meeting Pete’s. “If you wanted to.”

“Yeah. I think I established that.” Gabe taps Pete on the nose. “Get out and pump the gas, slacker. You have to pay your way.”

“You abducted me! And I helped make breakfast and did the dishes.”

“That was for Papi. Worked off your lodging. Go on. I’ll go get snacks.”

“None of that weird fucking cheese, dude.”

“That don’t carry that at 7-11. But they have taquitos. And Mountain Dew.”

“How can you be a vegan and so disgusting all at once?”

Gabe leans in and kisses him, quick and hard. Pete’s breath gets caught in his chest and he ducks his head and smiles when Gabe pulls back. “Just lucky, I guess.”


End file.
